The present invention relates to a vehicle structure in which a footrest on which a driver's foot is placed is arranged near and on an inward side, in a vehicle width direction, of a slant face of a front wheelhouse in a plan view of a vehicle.
Conventionally, there has been a problem about a collision mode in which a collision load is directly inputted to the inside of a vehicle compartment from a vehicle side, without crushing of front side frames extending in a vehicle longitudinal direction at right-and-left both ends of a vehicle front portion, and a bumper reinforcement interconnecting respective front end portions of the right-and-left front side frames.
This collision mode is called a “small overlap collision”, which may occur in a case in which the vehicle front portion collides with an obstacle having a small width in the vehicle width direction, such as a pole, at its one-side end portion.
The above-described small overlap collision has the following problem in a case in which a footrest on which a passenger's (driver's) foot is placed is arranged at an outward-side position, in the vehicle width direction, in a vehicle compartment which is located near and on an inward side, in the vehicle width direction, of a slant face of a front wheelhouse in a plan view of a vehicle, for example.
Specifically, in a case in which the impact load is inputted to the inside of the vehicle compartment from the vehicle side so that the footrest comes to move forward, it may be necessary to properly design vehicle structure, layout, fastening structure of members, and the like so that appropriate holding of the passenger's foot at the footrest can be ensured despite the above-described forward moving of the footrest. Consequently, there is a problem in that the vehicle weight may increase or the design flexibility may deteriorate. This problem is to be solved.
Meanwhile, Japanese Patent Laid-Open Publication No. 2006-82671 discloses a technology in which when a dash panel moves rearward in a vehicle frontal collision, a portion of a floor pad is allowed to move rearward so that a passenger's foot can be properly protected.
The technology disclosed in the above-described patent document, however, merely assumes the case in which the impact load is inputted from a vehicle front due to a head-on collision of the vehicle with the obstacle, this patent document discloses nothing about countermeasures against the case in which the collision load is directly inputted to the inside of the vehicle compartment from the vehicle side when the small overlap collision occurs.